Some of the streets, in fact most of them in which business is transacted, resemble strongly the shop scenes in harlequinades, for the Americans have carried advertising so far that their streets of shops, and especially those in New York, are simply museums of grotesque advertisement.

"In my youth I had learnt, by sedulously imitating the pantaloons in the harlequinades, to drop flat on my face instinctively, and to produce the illusion of being picked up neatly by the slack of my trousers and set on my feet again."

In 1768, Leopold Mozart, the father of the composer, declared that the Viennese public had no love of anything serious or sensible; "they cannot even understand it, and their theatres furnish abundant proof that nothing but utter trash, such as dances, burlesques, harlequinades, ghost tricks, and devils 'antics will go down with them."

This great comic artist devised the eccentric costume still worn by clowns -- the original whiteness of the Pierrot's dress being used as a groundwork upon which to paint variegated spots, stars, and patches; and nearly all the "comic business" of modern harlequinades is of his invention.

And he, "No indeed; I would not have killed them, for they are but buffoon-folk, and we should have enjoyed their harlequinades and would have made them dance to us a wee and all and some tell us tales to gladden our minds; after which we would have suffered them depart and go about their own business."